Harvard Medical School

Lab Members

Lydia Lynch, PhD

Lydia Lynch received her B.Sc. degree in Cell Biology and Genetics from University College Dublin, Ireland. She received her PhD in Immunology in 2008 from University College Dublin, in the lab of Prof. Cliona O’Farrelly in St. Vincent’s University Hospital.
Lydia received a Newman Fellowship for her early post-doctoral studies with Prof. Donal O’Shea in St. Vincent’s University Hospital, Dublin. Here they established the Immunology and Obesity Lab, which coordinates international, collaborative, translational research in obesity and its complications. Lydia then received the prestigious UNESCO-L’Oreal International Women In Science Fellowship, where she moved to Harvard Medical School to study iNKT cells in adipose tissue in the lab of Mark Exley. In 2009, Lydia received an International Marie Curie Fellowship to continue her postdoctoral studies in immunometabolism, in the labs of Prof. Michael Brenner and Prof. Ulrich von Andrian in Harvard. In 2013, she became a junior faculty member at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. In 2014, Lydia started her independent lab with a joint appointment between the Division of Endocrinology and the Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Immunology, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
Lydia’s lab is interested in the effects of obesity and diet on immune cell functions, particularly innate cells including iNKT cells, NK cells and T cells. The Lynch lab also studies the role of the immune system in the regulation of metabolism and body weight, particularly the local immune system in adipose tissue in mice and humans.Xavier Michelet, PhD

Dr. Xavier Michelet is a Postdoctoral Scientist in the Lynch Lab. Xavier was awarded his masters and PhD from graduated from Université Paris Sud (Paris XI). His PhD studies involved the role of class E VPS proteins and autophagy in the development of the nematode C. elegans. Xavier then moved to Boston where he did a postdoc in the lab of Prof. Michael Brenner, working on membrane trafficking in dendritic cells and macrophages in the establishment of the immune response and the response to the infection.
In the Lynch lab, Xavier works on the role of NK cells in adipose tissue, and the effects of obesity on lysosome function and cytotoxicity in natural killer (NK) cells.

Andrew Hogan, PhD

Dr. Andrew Hogan is a visiting Postdoctoral Fellow in the Lynch Lab. Andrew graduated from NUI Maynooth with 1st class honors before completing his PhD under the supervision of Dr Derek Doherty on the “Characterization of supervision of human invariant natural killer T cells”. In 2009, he was awarded a UCD Newman Fellowship in Diabetes & Obesity sponsored by Sanofi Aventis with Prof Donal O’Shea’ Obesity Immunology Research Group based in St Vincent’s University Hospital. Recently he was appointed Senior Scientist within the group. Andrew’s research interests are primarily on innate immune cell function in obesity and diabetes, specifically the impact of obesity and gut hormones/adipokines on invariant natural killer T cell function. Andrew visits the Lynch lab in Harvard for several months each year, to carry out translational collaborative research between the Ireland and Boston.

Andrew is also the former Irish and European heavyweight kickboxing champion, and continues to teach kickboxing to adults and children in the TKO gym he founded